Wrap Up: Teens in Tech Conference 2.0

On Saturday, February 6th, it was the second Teens in Tech Conference, or as we called it, Teens in Tech Conference 2.0. It was a really exciting day filled with amazing attendees, speakers, sponsors, giveaways and overall fun. I just wanted to take a little bit of time to go over some of things that happened at the conference.

The conference would not have been made possible with out the amazing content of our speakers. Danny Trinh from Digg kicked off the conference, and gave an amazing talk, just like last year. Joey Primiani started his talk off with a bang, entering the room in a space suit, and with a “fan club” — it definitely woke everyone up in the morning. Our first interview in the morning was with John Ramey and Zak Hassanein, the Co-Founders of isocket, a new startup that handles advertising solutions for companies, which recently raised $2 million in funding from top VC’s and Angels’ in Silicon Valley. Tim Showalter-Loch from Best Buy talked to the crowd about what Best Buy, a large electronics seller is doing to attract teens, and to make their business more eco-friendly, as well as their new project, @15.

Our amazing sponsors had a few moments to demo their products, and give a little talk about them. Following that, we had lunch along side some networking between attendees.

Alex Nichols kicked off the afternoon sessions talking about marketing and entrepreneurship in the 21st century — Adam Debreczeni, who designed and built our conference web site, talked about designing for youth, and gave some really interesting examples on good and bad designs. We ended up the afternoon with a eco-friendly talk from SmartPowerEd, an interview with Josh Shipp, and a really great talk from Dropbox Co-Founder and CEO, Drew Houston.

Whenever someone registers for the conference through Eventbrite, I get an email notifying me. At 6:00 PM, I got a very interesting email from Eventbrite, saying that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, just registered for the conference. My jaw immediately dropped. At first, I couldn’t believe that it was actually him, but when he showed up on time at 9:00 AM on Saturday, I was blown away even more. Steve was an amazing attendee, offered feedback, signed a few attendees personal MacBook Pros, and even helped us giveaway some raffle tickets!

The Teens in Tech Conference would not have been made possible with out the support of our amazing sponsors and partners. Most importantly, I’d like to thank Google for letting us use their San Francisco office, as well as provide snacks, drinks, audio equipment, chairs and tables for us to use. Not mentioned, Google gave away two Nexus One’s at the conference, plus t-shirts, puzzles, stickers, Wave and Voice invites, and much more. Some of our other sponsors, like Pana.ma gave away an iPod Touch, and Altec Lansing gave away amazing speakers, and list goes on. If you’d like to see all of our sponsors, check them out here. Lastly, special thanks to Rickshaw Bagworks for creating custom Small Zero Messenger bags for the conference.

If you weren’t able to make the conference, we streamed the entire conference via Ustream, where you can watch all the sessions.

Obviously, there is a lot that we can improve on for the conference, and we are always open to suggestions, but in my opinion, this years conference was much better then last year, in all ways. Thank you for making that happen! Until next year, we’ll see you online!